The Haunting

by Alex Bell

  I ran to the side of the wall and leaned over as far as I dared. For a moment, I thought I saw Kara’s dark hair in the water and I grabbed the life-saving ring hanging from the rails, but when I turned back I saw that it wasn’t hair floating there at all, but seaweed.

  “Kara!” I screamed into the wind. “Kara!”

  She never answered. The waves crashed into the pier over and over again, covering everything with foam and flecks of sand and shattered shells, and although my eyes darted around everywhere, I just couldn’t see her, I just couldn’t see her. In the end I was forced to throw the ring out at random before running back down the pier to fetch help. I knew, deep down, that it was too late. But sometimes you just have to scream for help anyway, even when you know that there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to help you.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Shell

  The coastguard sent out a search party for Kara and wanted me to wait, but I couldn’t stay. I knew in my bones that Kara was gone, and if they found her then it would already be too late. I had to get back to the Waterwitch and get that witch bottle before I lost my nerve.

  As I hurried back through the cobbled streets I tried not to think about what had just happened but I kept seeing Kara inside my head, drowned at the bottom of the ocean, swallowed up by a monster that was always hungry no matter how many shipwrecks and souls it gobbled up. I felt a sob rise in my chest and had to push it back down hard. There was no time for falling apart now.

  As I got closer to the inn, I heard angry voices – voices that I recognized – and all thoughts of Kara went out of my mind. I felt almost like a sleepwalker as I turned into the street and saw Jem and Dad. The last time I saw Dad was the day of my accident, and it felt odd seeing him now. Part of me wanted to run to him but the other part wanted to run from him, and the two conflicting urges seemed like they might tear me right down the middle, like I was a paper doll. That’s what it feels like to love someone you’re afraid of, I guess – just the worst feeling in the whole entire world.

  “You’re responsible!” Dad was yelling at Jem. “If you hadn’t taken my keys then I wouldn’t have missed the boat. Now I have no goddamn job and it’s your fault!”

  Jem tried to say something but it was no good trying to talk to Dad when he was angry. He went to a place where he couldn’t hear you, where he couldn’t hear anything beyond the small, angry thing screaming and shouting inside his own head. When I was little I used to imagine the angry man in Dad’s head as one of those circus strongmen, with muscles bulging everywhere and a very large moustache and very small eyes. Horrible to look at but cartoonish and buffoonish – nothing really, truly frightening. I knew better than that now. There was no circus strongman inside Dad’s head, there was a devil instead. A devil that hated us and wanted Dad to hate us, too.

  The shouting must have been audible from inside the Waterwitch because the door opened and Emma came out, her hand on Bailey’s collar. She stopped dead when she saw Dad – she knew enough about our family to realize it was a very bad thing that he had turned up here like this. I didn’t know whether Dad had found out somehow that we were staying at the Waterwitch or if he’d just been hanging around outside the Seagull but, either way, he was here now, and the thought flashed through my mind that it was the curse, that this was how the witch was going to hurt us.

  For a moment, the puddles on the cobbles looked like blood, dark and gleaming. I blinked hard and, when I opened my eyes, they were just water again, still and flat as a mirror, reflecting the Waterwitch back at me, with pale faces in the windows and black birds on the roof.

  “I’m not giving you any more money,” Jem said coldly. “What happened to the taxi fare I gave you that night? I suppose you drank it?”

  The truth always made Dad the maddest of all. We learned that a long time ago. So I could tell that what Jem had said was true by the way Dad reacted. I’d seen him fly off the handle before, many times, but it never got any easier to watch.

  He reached into his pocket and, suddenly, there was a boning knife in his hand and I felt this sick feeling of dread, a feeling I knew well.

  “You ungrateful little shit,” he said, glaring at Jem and speaking in a harsh, ugly whisper.

  “Dad!” I called out. I had no idea what I was going to say – my only thought was to distract him. He couldn’t be looking at my brother like that – not when he had a knife in his hand. Suddenly I was back in the car with the melted ice cream all those years ago, trembling and letting Jem take the beating and the blame for something I had done. I couldn’t let that happen again. This time I had to make some kind of difference. Behind me, more birds gathered on the roof of the Waterwitch. I could hear their wings rustling. They were up there, watching and waiting – waiting for the thing they’d been watching and waiting for their entire lives.

  Dad turned at my voice and almost seemed to recoil from me, taking a step back on the cobbles. “You stay right where you are!” he said, pointing the knife at me. “Take one step closer and I swear to God you’ll regret it!”

  “If you don’t leave in the next five seconds, I’m calling the police,” Emma said, and I winced to hear her talk to Dad like that because I knew he would never accept that kind of tone from anyone.

  Sure enough, the next moment he was striding towards her, the knife still gripped in his hand, his knuckles completely white.

  And I guess Bailey thought that Emma was in danger and that he had to protect her because he charged forwards, his collar ripped right out of Emma’s hand, and he was barking and snarling at Dad in the street, his hackles raised, his upper lip drawn back and his teeth gleaming pale and sharp, like a wolf in the grey morning light.

  Emma lunged up out of her chair to try to grab him but she was too late to stop what happened next. The knife in Dad’s hand flashed once, and then it was coming down and coming down and coming down.

  There was an awful sound – somewhere between a yelp and a howl – and then Bailey was lying on the cobbles and there was blood on his fur, slick and metallic. Emma’s cry of anguish went right through me as she dropped down on the floor beside her dog. Jem was running towards Dad and suddenly I could see what was going to happen – I could see it clear as day, as if I was staring straight into a witch ball.

  Dad would spin around to meet Jem and then the boning knife would bury itself in my brother’s neck and nothing would ever be OK again. I ran forwards without thinking about what I was doing, and the birds came off the roof behind me, claws scraping against slate as they spread their black wings against the salt-coloured sky.

  “No!” I snarled the word, reaching Dad first, before Jem, and shoving him square in the chest with my free hand.

  Dad turned his head to look down at me and, for just a moment, the angry mask that made him look like an ape was replaced with a look of childlike fear. Then the wall of birds hit him in a flurry of feathers and wings and beaks and claws.

  Dad staggered back into the street, both hands clutching at his chest, a gasp of pain bubbling up out of his throat. The birds wriggled underneath his fingers, squirmed their way beneath his shirt and then dug their beaks deeper and deeper into his chest, pulling out lumps of flesh and strands of hair.

  Dad went down on his knees, then curled up sideways on the cobbles, jerking and twitching. I knew the birds were tearing out his heart in chunks and I was glad. I was glad! I wanted him to die. I loved him but I wanted him gone because loving someone so cruel was too hard and would never get any easier.

  Somebody called an ambulance and the birds left when the paramedics arrived. Nobody saw them go except for me. Nobody knew what had really just happened. The ambulance crew said that Dad had had a massive heart attack, and pronounced him dead at the scene. Natural causes, they said.

  But I couldn’t think of a more unnatural way to die.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Emma

  I couldn’t feel the pain in my back because the pain in my heart oblitera
ted everything else. My arms were around Bailey, my hands on his coat were sticky with blood. He whined softly and tried to lick my face. The knife had got his shoulder and I tried to tell myself that a shoulder wasn’t too bad, that at least it hadn’t been his chest or head, that perhaps he would be OK.

  Someone said they would drive us to the nearest vet. I didn’t want to let go of him. I wanted to pick him up and carry him myself but, of course, I couldn’t.

  “I’ll take him,” Jem said, there at my side. “Give him to me, Em.”

  “Be careful!” I said as Jem lifted him up in his arms.

  Someone else helped me to stand up and, in the first moments after my spine uncurled, the pain was so sickeningly bad that I really thought I might pass out. But I couldn’t let Bailey down, I couldn’t not be with him.

  When someone started fussing about my wheelchair I practically screamed at them to leave it there. All that mattered was getting to the vet’s as quickly as possible. Soon, Jem, Shell and I were in the back seat of someone’s car, with Bailey on our laps.

  From the window I could see the paramedics lifting Jem and Shell’s father on to a gurney and I could almost believe that he was still alive, that he wasn’t really dead at all. I expected him to sit up at any moment and call after us but, instead, his body remained limp and lifeless, one hand hanging over the edge of the gurney. I’d never seen a dead body before and my mind reeled with the fact that I was seeing one now. Jem and Shell were staring out the window at him, too, and it was as if our eyes were locked on the sight. The ambulance’s blue lights flashed over everything, making it all look like a scene from a film. It was a relief when the car pulled around the corner and the sight was left behind, breaking the spell.

  Bailey whined and I talked to him softly, telling him he would be OK. He kept licking my hands, but he seemed suddenly older to me than he ever had before and there seemed to be too many grey hairs on his muzzle. This was my fault, all my fault.

  Finally, we were at the vet’s and Bailey was rushed off. My walking stick was back with my wheelchair so Jem practically had to carry me to my seat in the waiting room. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so helpless before in my whole life.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Shell

  “Jem? Can I speak to you alone for a minute?”

  I knew he didn’t want to leave Emma but he followed me into the cold air outside.

  “Why did he have to bring a knife with him, for God’s sake?” he said. He kicked a bin nearby and the metal clanged too loudly in the cold air. “He always was his own worst enemy. It’s no wonder he had a heart attack with all that rage he carried around all the time.”

  I clenched my hands into fists. Jem was wrong; it wasn’t Dad’s rage that had killed him – it was mine. I saw the birds swoop down on him once again in a flurry of black wings; bloody beaks ripping out chunks of flesh, frantic to get to his heart. I couldn’t talk about Dad right now, not even to Jem. I couldn’t think about what I had just done. I couldn’t look down at my own hands in case I saw blood dripping from them.

  “I have to tell you about something that happened earlier,” I said. “I think Kara is dead.”

  “What?” Jem stared at me.

  “I went to see her this morning. We had breakfast at Banjo Pier. And, right at the end, she … she jumped into the water.”

  “Oh my God! Why? What happened?”

  The witch cursed her, I wanted to say, but that would only lead to an argument so I just shook my head and said, “I don’t know. I guess she was still upset about yesterday. The coastguard went out to try to find her but … I think it will be too late.”

  “You don’t know that,” Jem said at once. “Perhaps they’ve already found her. Perhaps she’s fine.” He glanced back towards the vet’s and said, “Let’s not jump to any conclusions until we find out what’s actually happened.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Jem

  The vet came out into the waiting room just as Shell and I walked back in.

  “It looks worse than it is,” she said. “The knife got his shoulder but didn’t hit any arteries. The shock isn’t ideal for a dog of his age but we’ve cleaned the wound and stitched it up and I think he’ll be OK. We’ve given him painkillers and he’s sleeping now. We’ll keep an eye on him here overnight but, all being well, you can take him home in a day or two.”

  We got a taxi back to Looe. Emma’s wheelchair was still there where we had left it on the street so I helped her into it and then the three of us went back into the Waterwitch, straight to our rooms to change our blood-stained clothes. I found Emma in the library afterwards and sat down in the armchair opposite her. “I’m so sorry, Em,” I said.

  She looked at me. “For what?”

  “For everything. For Bailey most of all.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she replied.

  “It’s not yours, either.” I reached out for her hand.

  “He’s my responsibility,” she said. “Of course it’s my fault. I should have kept him safe.”

  I wanted to tell her that she shouldn’t feel guilty, that there was nothing she could have done but the guilt would be there whatever I said so the words would have been meaningless and empty, hollow and useless. Worse than saying nothing at all.

  “I know what it feels like,” I said instead.

  Emma gave me a bleak look. “You know what it feels like to have a disability assistance dog who is faithful and loyal and—” She bit her lip and I could tell she was trying not to cry. “And changes your world and saves your life and is your best friend for six years and then gets stabbed trying to defend you?”

  “No. But I know what it’s like when someone you love gets hurt and you feel like you didn’t do enough to stop it,” I said.

  Emma put her head in her hands and said through her fingers, “I’m sorry. At least you were able to make a difference to Shell, though. You took her away.”

  I shook my head. “My biggest fear for Shell was never Dad. It was the demons in her own head. Mum had them and Shell has them, too. When Mum killed herself and Shell found her, it got worse. This thing with the birds. And now, today, she saw Dad die right in front of her…” I frowned, hearing myself say the words, feeling them sink into my brain. “I’d better go and check on her. Make sure she’s OK.”

  Chapter Forty

  Shell

  When I came face-to-face with the cellar door, I wanted to be brave and strong, but I felt nothing but fear.

  My birds gathered around my feet, staring at the door before us. I remembered how they had protected me from those hideous sea spiders, how they’d flown at Dad, and I understood, at last, what the birds were, what they had always been. They weren’t familiars at all – they were the magic itself. Pure magic that happened to have shining eyes and glossy wings and had been desperate to get out of me all along, get out and fly like they were supposed to.

  I reached my trembling hand out slowly towards the door. When it was almost there I dropped it and shook my head.

  “I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t, I can’t, I just can’t.”

  I hated that I was such a terrible coward but I turned away from the birds and walked into the library where I found Emma alone by the fire. Jem would be back soon and I knew I didn’t have much time. I had to talk to her quickly, before he came back. He was far more likely to listen to her.

  “Jem’s looking for you,” Emma said, as soon as I walked in. “He wanted to make sure that you’re—”

  “Emma, please,” I cut her off. I wanted to sound calm and in control, but my voice shook as I spoke. “Please speak to Jem. Tell him that we’ve got to leave, that we can’t stay in this place another minute. He’ll listen to you – I know he will. I can’t stay here any more, I really can’t. I’d rather sleep on the streets! I’d rather be anywhere other than here! I’d almost rather be dead!”

  I started to cry; I couldn’t help it. It was all just too much.

 
A hand took hold of my arm and I realized that Jem had come into the room behind me, that he’d heard every word I’d said. I was afraid he’d be angry, that he’d get frustrated with me again, that he’d tell me to pull myself together. But instead he put his arms around me and held on to me tight.

  “We’ll leave,” he said quietly. “We’ll leave today.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Shell

  The Seagull still had rooms free so Emma booked us in for the night. She took a room on the ground floor and Jem and I took the twin room next door. We didn’t even stop to pack more than a change of clothes – Jem said he would go back for our stuff later. I took the poppets from the wardrobe and, when we got to the Seagull, put them straight in the safe. But Kara’s words kept trying to sneak back into my brain and spoil my sense of relief: The witch’s curse will follow you to the ends of the earth… Once you’re cursed there’s no hope…

  I blocked them out, refused to listen to them. Maybe we would be OK now that we had left the Waterwitch. Maybe it was over. Even Dad couldn’t hurt us any more. We were safe.

  Jem tried to talk to me about Dad once we got to the Seagull, wanting to know how I felt about what had happened, but the truth was that I didn’t feel anything. Just nothing. Just numb. It didn’t seem real. Part of me couldn’t help thinking that he wasn’t really dead at all; he was back at his cottage, getting into his overalls, preparing to go out on the fishing boats.

  When we went downstairs, everyone at the Seagull was talking about the girl who had jumped off the end of the pier that morning and we heard that her dead body had been found a couple of hours later by the coastguard. I tried to feel something – some sadness or regret or guilt – but I only had the same numb feeling I had about Dad.